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"It's going to be a discovery about how I feel and how I sustain myself during these five or six days in the air."

And Bertrand Piccard - who has flown Solar Impulse on other stages of the voyage - told the BBC: "There's one pilot at a time, so the pilot needs to do everything on his own. And it's a very large aeroplane, big wingspans, sensitive to turbulence, flying quite slow.

"So sometimes it's difficult to handle when the air moves. But we have an auto-pilot, we have toilets on board, we have food for days, water reserves and everything, and we are well trained."

The distance to Kalaeloa airport on Hawaii's O'ahu island is more than 8,000km (5,000 miles).

If, early on in the flight, the weather turns bad or he encounters a major technical problem, Mr Borschberg can always choose to turn around and head back to China or Japan.

But there will come a point where that option is denied to him, and Mr Borschberg and his support team have had to prepare for the possibility of ditching in the Pacific if something goes seriously wrong.

The pilot himself would not go down with the plane because of the risk of electrocution once in the water. Instead, he would bail out with a dinghy and wait for a ship to come and pick him up.

If he succeeds in reaching Kalaeloa airport, he will set several aviation records - not least the longest-duration journey for a single-seater plane.